


Nude Modeling isn't Romantic

by InsominiacArrest



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Art School, Falling In Love, Humor, M/M, Nude Modeling, UST
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2018-11-21 12:04:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11357127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsominiacArrest/pseuds/InsominiacArrest
Summary: Lance is a nude model for the art school since he needs the money and hey, it's not like he hates the attention. Keith is an art student retaking Figure Drawing and ends up helping the weird nude model boy when he passes out cold in class.Later, he could use some extra credit.Based on thisthistumblr post lol





	1. And we all Fall Down

Montana State University was where cowboys went to get science degrees and college students smoked blunts to feel slightly less cold. Bozeman spent six months out of the year perfecting the icicle, the rest of the time being prettier than a photoshopped computer screen saver, and all 12 months trying to stop people from leaving.

It was where yetis went on dares and the Ice Queen's original home.

Lance could honestly say the main dilemmas of his life were: living expenses, Planetary Physics 3055, and the temperature trying to freeze hell over. And as far as he could tell, the devil was probably getting his jacket on.

It wasn’t exactly his scene.

Lance was a warm weather boy at heart, a cold lemonade and hot sun boy, a boy built for rolling soft white beaches and babes in bikinis and pretty dudes in swim shorts. He was in love with the sunshine and he hoped one day she would write back to him and remind him that yes, the earth wasn’t actually one large eternal snowdrift.

He was here though.

After flubbing the SAT after a Test Anxiety Swirly Montana State was the only college still willing to give him a full ride based off of his GPA alone. So here he was, looking at miles of glistening frozen water and dirty flurries piling up in the gutters. It could be pretty... if pretty was defined by freezing your nads off in a wistful Game of the Thrones-esque goodbye. 

Lance tugs his hat on tighter, stumbling out of his warm island of a 24-hour dinner that knew him by name and filled his coffee mug up every twenty minutes. He checks the time on his phone and squints as he takes the first couple steps out the door. Even the small series of shops around him were hard to make out as the snow gathered on the street lights and made it a blurry swirling gray world.

“Ugh, dammit,” he mumbled to himself as he slipped on his first pile of slush that was only mildly trying to melt under the half-hearted salt thrown everywhere, “Dammit!” He says again as he slips forward, balancing his backpack in one hand and avoiding a cyclist who was somehow brave enough to bike in this (he had a bet with Hunk that these were shadow people, come to mow down the city day-walkers and also work on their glutes).

He passes the strip of shops quickly and feels his face start to sting from the wet onslaught as he makes the loop to campus.

He continues to mumble to himself and revel in warming his fingers on curse words his mama would pinch him for and more. Curse words and making faces at himself in shop windows did not actually help of course, he just walks a little faster. The slush bleeds through his boots to make his toes tingle in a bad way and he has to heave himself the rest of the way to the art building through force of will.

He tells himself he should get an award for this.

He jogs across the campus with his eyes barely open, trying to shield them from the onslaught and not get lost. The sun was already down so at least no one was directly able to see his new wet dog style fur-lined hat dripping into his eyes and plastered to his cheeks. He starts to sprint at the very end, darting toward Haynes Hall as fast as he can through the drifts and toward the bright lights of the premise, sanctuary and flickering cheap fluorescents.

He bursts through the front double doors just as his toes were expressing their final goodbyes.

He stomps his boots immediately, trying to get some feeling back into his feet and regretting going for ‘shop for less’ instead of ‘shop for survival' shoes.

He whips off his green trapper hat to shake it out, large globs of frozen ice splatter onto the white-speckled-gray tiles. The hallway was already pretty slick and muddy from the whole day of students walking through, but he still almost felt bad as he leaked all over it too.

He shakes his pants legs and kicks his boots again until his toes are tingling in a better way, he shakes his head again and huffs in frustration.

“Full ride, full ride, full ride.” He pants, “And then... Arizona.” He swore on all the deities that might protect college students and gave out grants over 20k that he’d make it to an observatory somewhere warm, _help me Warren Buffett_ he begins to pray _you’re my only ho._

He’s muttering to himself and dripping more little frozen droplets on the floor when he feels a slight prickle on the back of his neck. He looks around quickly, his senses fraying as he noticed he wasn’t alone in the hall. Figures.

He turns and blinks at a dark-haired boy all the way at the other side of the large hallway, almost tucked behind a pillar. Lance stares back at him.

He was at least twenty paces away, but his dark mullet was tied at the nape of his neck was very distinct, Lance narrowed his eyes, _that kid_.

His face was blank, sort of like an unintelligible mask, bored. His arms were crossed as he leaned back on the wall and _observed_. He wore a tight black sweater over a red jacket and a pair of jeans that looked like they might even have a fashionable tear in them. Lance leaned back slightly at the sight of Keith Kogane.

Eventually, he turns around and makes his way over to the restroom, Keith wouldn’t follow him there to be further obnoxiously enigmatic.

Lance waddles into the empty bathroom, stiff and dripping but he had ended up making a great time running from frostbite and for his life, so he had ten minutes before his shift started.

The didn’t explain why a rude ass Keith Kogane was staring at him instead of being in class, but Lance didn’t try to question the guy.

“ _Art students_ ,” he shakes his head.

Lance looks around, he briefly weighs the dangers of walking barefoot on a public bathroom floor against getting frostbite on his pinky toes. It was a hard sell.

Eventually, he just strips off his heavy winter coat (the most durable thing he owned and also coinciding from his mama). He shakes out the hood and rips off his favorite green jacket that got away with only getting the sleeves damp.

He takes the plunge and tears off his Payless boots and sopping wet socks too, standing barefoot on the questionable blue bathroom tiles. He puts the socks under the hand dryer and continued to press it with his elbow over and over again.

He then peels off his skinny jeans which had been plastered to his skin by the frigid dampness and he’s very happy when he found they hadn’t dyed his skin smurf denim blue or run on him or anything like that.

He checks the clock on his phone and then washed his hands with hot water to make sure they were all still there. He gives himself a once over, he doubted the art students would care that he was already in his boxers but he also hoped the ‘flushed, messy, and cold’ look was in.

But it was Montana.

He shakes his boots out again and then collects all his damp clothes in his arms.

He sighs as he pushes his way out of the boys' bathroom into the spacious beige hall, it was lined with artwork from the students, and oh, also Keith.

Lance pauses and looks right back over at him, Keith was frowning slightly and Lance wasn’t exactly sure what to do. Bring up Picasso? Discuss the best wines that paired with Hot Topic?

He just sort of scratches the back of his neck. They had two minutes.

Lance opens his mouth, and then he closes it.

Keith looks him up and down like an elevator without manners, “You should consider driving.”  
  
Lance narrows his eyes and feels a familiar prick of annoyance, “don’t have a car.”  
  
Keith rubs his nose, “Bus.”  
  
Lance squares his shoulders and looks over to the classroom, “maybe I like freezing. Keeps me humble," he turns back to give him a pointed look, "Unlike some people."  
  
Keith just shrugs back at him, “carry a towel then next time.”  
  
“Erg,” Lance definitely turns his back on him and stomps over to room 104, though it has a rather lackluster effect when he’s barefoot.

Keith drifts over and stands behind him, Lance shifts from side to side. He glances over his shoulder, he wasn’t very good with silences. Keith still looked bored, Lance opens his mouth and then looks back and forth between Keith and the classroom.

“Shouldn’t you be in there?” Lance asks stiffly as he watches Nina, the model before him, hop off the stool and toss her hair back.

“Got frustrated.” He says simply.

Lance raises his eyebrows and looks over his shoulder, “Oh.”  
  
Keith proceeds to point directly at Lance, “Don’t fidget this time.”  
  
Lance was back to scowling at him, “do you ever get tired of Christmas presents addressed to ‘Huge Tool’? Because it probably gets a little old.”  
  
Keith heaves a sigh, “I want to get you right.” Lance opens his mouth and then closes it, Keith tilts his head, “You have a lot of...angles.”

Lance gives a slow smile, feeling a little 'midnight bar with low lighting' quickly, “Good angles, huh?”  
  
Keith cocks his head to the side, “Just angles.”

Lance doesn’t have time to give out an annoyed huff or ask Keith if he was actually an alien when the first student, an incredibly tall student with curling orange hair, pushes out of the classroom. Lance stumbles back and Keith holds the door open to slip back into the room.

Lance rights himself and stands aside as students exit the classroom for their break in one long stream. He peeks into the room to see Nina finishing tying up her thick black boots and getting her clothes back on. She stands up and grins brightly over at him when she’s done. Lance is never sure if he’s happy she refused his first date offer, or if he was going to die alone with her picture clutched in his hands.

She finishes buttoning her heavy coat and walks over, “You looked like a drowned rat...Did you have a run-in with a bully with an ice hose or something?”  
  
Lance sniffs, “A bully called winter Nina. Winter. And he’s a vengeful bitch.”  
  
She shakes her head and then leans over to pinch his cheek lightly, “Ah, he’s just got a crush on you.”  
  
“Nooooo.”  
  
She laughs and throws her hands up, “Want me to wait around to drive you home?”  
  
He scratches his wrist, “Nah, I couldn’t ask that. Thanks though.” The idea was very very tempting, but he wasn’t about to let his friends wait around for three hours for him.

Intro to Figure Drawing was the longest class Lance had heard of, it was once a week on Wednesdays from 3pm to 9pm. They got regular breaks and Lance got $22 bucks an hour so he wasn’t complaining, but he wasn’t cheering either.

Nina smooths out her bright red lipstick against her dark skin, “I’ll admit, I have a Political Thought midterm tomorrow so I should probably go tackle that. It’s gonna be a bummer.”  
  
He smiles, “You’ll ace it, honestly.”

She shrugs, “I think I’m supposed to know things about Nietzsche, but I also have the personal goal to know less and less Nietzsche soooooo.”  
  
Lance laughs and leans forward, “Go go, go study for your test. I’ll be thinking of your beautiful face as I stare at the walls.”  
  
Nina raised her eyebrows and then thwacked him on the shoulder, “You’re cute but I have one master degree to get and enough campaigning to fill up schedules for two people.” She winks, “And you have a little growing up to do.”  
  
He made a face at her, “I’m grown up enough for _two_ people.”  
  
She laughs and turns around, “Have fun Lance.”  
  
He shakes his head, Nina Washington was a future politician in the making, tough as concrete, and waiting to fight someone on everything from military isolationism to how to pronounce the word ‘mayonnaise.’

She looked over her shoulder once before going out the door, flashing her blue eye shadow that popped like sparklers, she was 5’2 but wore three inch heels and was the most present person in any given room. His mama would call her ‘someone to look out for.’

Lance sighs softly, so really he might die holding her picture. Or if not, hopefully flipping Keith Kogane off.

He pushes his way back into the classroom. The art students got a twenty-minute break between models but Professor Hernandez was still in the room, talking to Keith evidently.

Keith was surrounded by torn up bits of portrait paper. Lance whistles softly and turns the other direction, he creeps toward the front of the classroom

Keith and the professor seem to be arguing lowly and Lance goes to find one of the heat vents to hang has clothes on. He _was_ going to have to walk home after this.

He’s rearranging his clothes and considering taking his shirt off to start when he feels a tap on his shoulder.

“Lance!” He jumps and turns around wildly, he grins when he sees who it is.

“Professor Hernandez,” he starts beaming, “my favorite professor who doesn’t do formulas.”  
  
The professor shook his head, his thick gray mustache bobbing, “Hope the engineering department isn’t running you too ragged me boy.” He slaps Lance hard on the back and Lance tries to not to flinch.

He was as old as they come in terms of professors and wore pressed shirts and high pants every day of the week, only sometimes adding a painting smock. He still had a full head of iron gray hair though and a pair of impossibly thick glasses.

Lance laughs while rubbing the spot where he gave him a hearty thumb, “Eh, pretty ragged. Raggedy Anne even, Midterms, you know...” Lance is reminded of the exhaustion he was beating away with a combination of coffee and spite, Professor Hernandez raises his eyebrows.

“Well,” the professor turns around and gestures, “I can help a little,” The professor looks him up and down, “first with drying you off a bit young man.”  
  
Lance perks up, “I like where this going, go on.”  
  
Hernandez walks over to the stool, “I got you and Nina three space heaters from my house, she said it ended up being quite toasty.”

Lance’s eyes go wide and his mouth goes open slightly, he stares at the little box heaters surrounding the stool. Professor Hernandez blinks and then turns around, “Anything wrong?”  
  
Lance rubs his face, “Professor,” he says slowly, “I’m so happy right now I think I might cry.”  
  
“Hmph,” The professor grunts, “I’ll turn them on high.”  
  
“If my mama wasn’t my mom I would have you adopt me.” Lance reaches forward for feel his hands warm up on one of them, “Seriously, my apartment is heated by old pipes and it’s not exactly effective. This will be the best part of my week.” Lance exhales as he already feels the coils start to glow, “I don’t think I’ve slept right since fall when it was 60 degrees out.”  
  
Professor Hernandez hum, “The apartments around here still crap?” He nods, “Well, let’s get through this session first and then you can tell me if it’s the best part of the week.” He turns away but Lance was reaching forward.

“No really,” Lance hunches over and then looks over to nod at him, “Thank you.”  
  
Professor Hernandez made an unreadable expression and then the door opened again, the tall boy with the orange hair went to go take his seat and Lance turns back to his stool. It was close to the end of break.

He reaches to take his shirt off as the rest of the students trickle back in, Professor Hernandez walks back over once to slap him roughly on the back again, Lance only winces slightly.  
  
He reached down, “As hot as you want it!”

“I will cry, I’m serious.”

“Go ahead, just keep yourself still while you do it. I’m thinking we’ll do a thinker pose today.” Lance nods back as he confirms that his shift was starting.  
  
The professor gets him set up with the pose he had in mind.

Technically, nude modeling wasn’t the ideal job for Lance, sitting still wasn’t exactly one of his strong points, but it paid probably the best on campus and had enough hours to be practical.

Plus, he actually sort of liked that it forced him to hyper-focus and sit still, he could go over formula’s in his head and make up flashcards or just give him some much needed space-out time. It wasn’t a bad gig.

He finally slips his boxers off and the art students give him a bored look as he goes to get into the professor's first assigned position. It was routine now.

He gets a little bit of rearrangement and he tries to avoid Keith’s general gaze in particular. Keith always looked at him like Lance was pluto and he was still trying to figure out if he was planet. Very intently.

He hears a clicking noise, “I’ll set the twenty minutes now.”  
  
Lance settled in, one of his legs was curled under him and he had a hand on one chin, they want to focus on back muscles so he was hunched over and had to keep his shoulders apart. 

He starts to repeat different acceleration and gravitational formulae in his head. The warmth leeches into his skin and he feels some core part of him start to thaw for what felt like the first time in months.

The heaters really start to crank and he releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding. The warmth pulls him in.

He felt like a cartoon character that could stretch his arms out and just go ‘awwwwwww’ as he basked in the new found heat.

Lance’s eyes start to droop, he concentrates, ‘centripetal force formula….fc=m*ac.’

The heat rubs up against him like a puppy he got on the first day of christmas. He blinks and his mind starts to wander to christmas break coming up, and pie, and wearing three pairs of socks all at once like some sort of millionaire.

He stifles a yawn so Keith won’t snap at him in the way the others really didn’t.

Lance tries to look out into the sea of tired art students to keep himself focused. Their eyes are all down at their work, scribbling and furrowing their brow as they erase and readjust and try to figure out what shading was.

When he first joined the class it was pretty easy to tell that this was nothing like Rose and Jack on the titanic, the only thing sinking here was the spirits of thirty very weary heads. Nude modeling really wasn’t romantic.

Lance starts to feel warm in the nice way, like a kiss from the sun or a hug that just kept going. It was a simple thing.

He began to think maybe the constant cold had been the only thing keeping him on his toes from the unending stream of tests and labs and lab tests, late night in observatories and then late nights in libraries. The realization of his utter exhaustion was slow and profound, the pop of a stuffed bottle, a floodgate opening.

He’s not entirely bothered when his eyes start to flutter shut, and then he’s falling.

The last thing he remembers is glancing off to the side just for a moment to see the dark, intent eyes of the boy with the mullet and the piles of torn up portrait art around him. Keith’s eyebrows were raising.

Lance falls.


	2. Passing Out Isn't Romantic

Lance’s head throbs a little bit, his chest clenches gently and his thoughts swim in what felt like a thick bowl of mushroom soup. He twitches, he hears a swarm of whispered voices off to his left.

“What do we do with him?” Someone asks with a tight strain, though the words sounded almost muffled and distant.

“Has anyone ever noticed how like… naked they are?” A second voice chimed in. 

“Don’t be weird Tod.”  
  
“Super naked.”   
  
“Is no one going to answer me?” That sounded like Molly, the class ‘leader,’ Lance tries to climb back to the present from what felt like the bottom of a wind tunnel.

“Get out of the way,” a rough voice answers them, Keith of all people, “move, all of you.”  
  
Lance definitely twitches at that, he tries to lift his head but it was like trying to hold up gravity with a toothpick, it just keeps falling back down.

“Here,” two arms were crammed under his neck and knees, a blanket is thrown over his body too. “Anyone know where he lives?”

Lance makes a soft sound and tries to squirm as he feels his body lifted in the air, but it was futile, the voices kept going.  
  
“It should be in the files, one moment.” That was the professor, his voice giving off a tangible concern.

“You’re going to take him home?” Molly did not sound happy, Lance tries to crack open his eyes but manages to fall deeper into some deep hole. They seem to ignore him anyway.

“He just passed out like that, we should…”  
  
He strains to hear the rest of the sentence, but the hole beneath him felt like sand, he slips back deeper down, he falls. The voices drift in and out through his filter, but his sleepy brain seemed to overcome him.

_Thump._

A loud sound crashes across his senses, Lance jerks slightly and pulls his thoughts up from the depths.

“Whoa,” he flails in place for a moment and pushes against the two arms still holding him up. The bright light hits his eyes and he jerks up to cover them, “Nnnh.”  
  
“Oh great, there you are.”   
  
Lance peaks through his fingers and swallows thickly as he sees a sharp, hollowed face hovering just above him, he kicks his naked legs in the air.

“Keith,” they were walking forward, “um?”   
  
“Just stay still,” Keith grumbles, “I told the Professor I’d take you back and get someone to keep an eye on you.”   
  
Lance’s eyebrows skyrocket, “put me down, put me down.” He grabs at the single heavy blanket covering him and tugs at it, Keith seems to pay no mind and steadily brings them to the double doors.

“Just give it a second, you don’t even have shoes on.” He was scowling right back at him, “you were out for a good ten minutes.”   
  
Lance shakes his head, “Okay, but this isn’t our wedding night, you can’t just hoist me away through these- whoa!”

“Bundle up,” Keith turned around and shouldered the heavy doors.  
  
“Keith, buddy, don’t be ins- shit!” He grabs at the large blanket as the first gust of wind hits them and Keith shoves his way into the storm. “Shit, what are you doing?”   
  
“My truck is right there,” Keith grabs at the trailing blanket and tugs it over Lance’s head jerkily, “as my brother says.” He chuckles, “patience.”   
  
They were running forward and Lance’s thoughts were racing, “clothes! Clothes.”   
  
“One sec I said.” Keith jostles him as they scurry over the snowy ground toward the curb, Lance had to admit, he was distantly impressed by Keith still being able to hold him after this long. Impressed was one word for it.

He grabs onto his neck as they slide down the gutter and Keith grabs at the door handle of large red truck, he did a fancy turn and the door clicked open as Keith adjusted Lance for a moment.

“You don’t lock your car?” He asks hoarsely as he feels at the lump on his head.

Keith blinks as he shoulder the door open, “It’s Montana.”  
  
“Goddammit Keith.”   
  
“Get in.” The other boy says with a flick of his dark hair.

Lance juts his arms out and fumbles to climb into the truck without touching the snowy ground or having the blanket fall completely off. He scrambles awkwardly into the passenger's seat and arranges himself with as much dignity as he can muster.

He only pauses to warm himself on the blasting air vents of the warm truck.

He sees Keith slip in a large paper bag next to him and realizes they had put his clothes in there for him. He bites his lip as he reflects on the fact he had just been picked up and perhaps ‘saved’ by his least favorite art student.

Lance groans to himself at the ceiling.

“Don’t sound too grateful,” Keith climbs into the driver's seat next to him and closes the door, Lance watches the other boy fiddle with the keys in the ignition for a moment.

Lance’s eyebrows slowly knit together, “ _this_ was your solution?” He finally asks as he throws his arms in the air.

Keith glances over at him. “Again. You’re welcome.”  
  
“Come on!” He tugs at his short hair.

Keith shakes his head, “the others were saying call an ambulance. Or suggesting they throw you outside in a snowdrift to wake you up.”   
  
Lance’s face goes pale, “noted.” He studies Keith’s profile in the low lights from the school, he looks away creakily. He grasps his hands, “Ambulances are expensive.”   
  
“I know.”

“So...thanks. Yeah.”  
  
Keith shakes his head, “do you have someone to make sure you wake in the morning? Or at all.”   
  
Lance makes a face at him, “I don’t have a concussion.” He huffs, “just midterm-mondays.”   
  
Keith took the car out of park to pull away from the curb, he looked over at him sceptically. “Mid-term mondays? I wouldn’t call passing out in class normal study habits.”   
  
Lance shrugs, “It was warm. I was tired.” He gives a weak wink, “And I’m one of a kind.”

Keith snorts softly as he speeds up in the crusty, thick weather, “I can tell.”  
  
Lance makes a gurgle sound in the back of the throat, “see? This is why it’s hard for me to be grateful. ‘I can tell,’ tool words.”

“What? I can tell,” Keith makes a right turn as he reads the directions on his lap, “And you might want to put pants on before we get to your place. And get some sleep,” he snorts, “it will be Mid-term tuesdays tomorrow.”  


Lance furrows his brow slightly and reaches for the bag, he rustles around to find his pants, he flashes him a stare, “don’t look.”  
  
Keith squints at him through the drivers mirror, “I see you naked literally once a week.”   
  
Lance sprouts a small grin and echos Keith’s tone, “you’re welcome.”   
  
“Oh my God.”   
  
“And this is different,” he shakes his head, “you don’t have a pencil out.”   
  
“Do you want me to get a pencil?” They go over a bump in the road and Lance considers just rolling out of the truck right then.

“No, jeez, just stare at someone elses dick for a moment while I change.”  
  
Keith gives a heavy sigh, “you are lucky the professor likes you.”   
  
Lance sniffs loudly as he grabs the edge of pants and wiggles them on an inch at time in the seat, “don’t be jelly.”   
  
“I’m not,” Keith frowns slightly.   
  
Lance makes a kissy face, “don’t tell me you don’t want Dr. H to actually like you.”   
  
Keith blows air out of his nose, “He knows I have… _a process_ .”   
  
Lance rolls his eyes, “if that’s what you want to call it.” Keith glances over at him and Lance throws his hands up, “still getting dressed over here!”

He finishes buttoning himself up and Keith gives him look that could curdle milk, “Once. A. Week.”  
  
Lance snorts, “yes. Torn up bits of drawings of my naked body, once a week.”   
  
Keith shoots him a look, “Process.” He repeats, “And you have. Angles. I told you.”

“I uh, yeah. I mean, sure.” Lance tries to think of something funny to say but Keith was shooting him a very concentrated look. Like he was unwrapping him with tweezers as a bomb counted down.

He gulps thickly and rubs the back of his neck, they sit in silence for a moment, “Soooo,” He takes a deep breath, he could see his street sign coming up, “thanks again.”

Keith was glancing down at a piece of paper in his hand and mumbling, Lance frowns at him and says a little louder. “For picking me up. I guess.”   
  
Keith finally looks back over at him, “take better care of yourself.” He says bluntly back and Lance crosses his arms over his chest. “I’m serious.”

Lance frowns deeply for a moment and takes a deep resigned breath.  
  
“It won’t happen again,” Lance puts out his pinky, “Pinky promise.” Keith just stares it, Lance shakes his pinky in the air, “see? My pinky. Pinky promise.”   
  
Keith looked at him even more blankly, “Right.”

Lance eventually delicately puts his hand down in defeat, “alright. I’ll just buy you new black skinny jeans in return.”  
  
Keith glances down at the directions one last time and seems to pull over to Lance’s apartment building without needing to be prompted.

“No need.” He turns the car engine off. “I don’t need anything in return.”  
  
Lance drums his fingers over his leg, “I mean,” he shrugs, “I pay back favors. I really could, you know. Pay you back.”   
  
He felt strangely sheepish at that moment and looks over at the street signs.

Keith just shakes his head again, “take the blanket,” he says sturdily, “and sleep for the night.”

Lance gives a weary smile, “I’ll try.”

“Oh,” Keith leans back, “And hold still during class.” 

Lance grumbles to himself, “I’ll buy you a new attitude in return, ugh.”  
  
Keith pushes his bangs back, “Careful Lance.”

Lance finishes arranging his sweater on himself, he grins, “aren’t I always?”

Keith sniffs, “apparently not.” Lance sticks his tongue out at him but Keith just raises his hand in a little wave, “Next week then.”  
  
Lance takes a deep breath, “Next week. And don’t tell people about this,” he wags a finger in the air, “I have a reputation to maintain.”   
  
Keith gave wry smile, “more reputation than ‘guy who got stuck in a gogo-dancer cage at a club’?”   
  
“That was an honest mistake! The lock was… very complicated!”

Keith was still smiling so maybe that was a good sign.  
  
“Noted,” Keith wasn’t looking at him as Lance reached for the door, “take care of yourself.”   
  
Lance keeps his eyes on him as he shoves on his boots and jacket, he squares his shoulder, “you too.” He begins to wave, “see you next week.”   
  
Keith gives the smallest wave back and Lance meets his eyes for a brief brief second before jumping out and running to his door.

He runs to the shelter of his building on creaking legs, turning around to see Keith’s still truck and realizing Keith probably wasn’t going anywhere until Lance made it inside. Lance covers his face for a moment.

He creeps into his apartment hallway and only looks back to see Keith turning the headlights on in the misty scattered white air.

It was one hell of a night, Lance cringes internally at himself and remembers the feeling of being carried through the snow, being lifted in the air and moved after falling into a deep sleep. It was like a fairytale, where all the heroes were assholes.

He sighs as Keith’s tail lights disappear out into the white fluff of snow and Lance is left with a mix of feelings tingling in his gut.


End file.
